


Five Years

by azn-jack-fiend (ajf)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Backstory, Cherno Alpha - Freeform, Crimson Typhoon - Freeform, Gen, Shaolin Rogue - Freeform, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajf/pseuds/azn-jack-fiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh’s too tired to be angry. He understands the reason, anyway. It’s the law of salvage, the new way of the world: always scavenge what you can from the ruins. Leave nothing wasted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2020

_  
March 2020, Los Angeles Shatterdome_

 

“This was a mistake,” Raleigh says. He’s not afraid, but his nerves are sizzling with contradictory impulses, his heart pounding like a goddamn jackhammer. He grips the metal chair until his knuckles ache. 

The HR rep sitting across from him lets out a small sigh. “You’re not ready,” she says. “That’s... understandable. We can take you back to Cedars-Sinai and finish the paperwork tomorrow, or next week.”

“You don’t understand. You don’t understand at all.” He hears the accusing edge in his voice, and hates it. He doesn’t want to lash out. Doesn’t want to see her flinch. His right arm begins to throb, burned flesh pressing tight against moist bandages. “It’s not the paperwork. It’s the brain scan. I’m not doing it.” He meets her eyes. She’s young, younger than him, and a lot smaller. She’s not flinching. “You’ve been helpful. Professional. I’ll tell your supervisor that. But I’m _not_ doing the brain scan.”

“I can get the technicians in, and the psychiatrist heading the unit. They can tell you—”

“I’m not doing the brain scan.” 

She raises her hand to her forehead, then puts it back down again. “The PPDC can’t authorize your pension without the brain scan. That’s been reinforced from the highest levels.”

“Pentecost?”

She nods.

Raleigh’s too tired to be angry. He understands the reason, anyway. It’s the law of salvage, the new way of the world: always scavenge what you can from the ruins. Leave nothing wasted. Take the fallen Jaeger to Oblivion Bay, butcher-mine the kaiju corpse, extract every ounce of tactical information from the one surviving Ranger.

“It’s not going to show anything,” he says. “There’s no trick to solo piloting. I thought I was already dead, so I wasn’t holding anything back.” He’s not really arguing with her. All he wants is to justify the decision he’s already made. If the brain scan would help the war effort, then he’d go under it, relive Yancy ripping away. “I’m not doing the brain scan. I don’t need the pension.”

He surges out of the chair, ignoring the surface pain and its partner, the dull throb that winds around his rib bones. 

The HR rep darts in front of the door, blocking his way. “We can take you back to the hospital. You can revisit this decision at a later—”

“I’m leaving. Move,” he growls, short on patience and dying to get away, away from the metal tentacles that threaten _remembrance_. Re-member. Re-sever. Rip Yancy away mid-sentence, rewind, loop it back, do it all over and over and over again. 

“If that’s what you really want,” she says, but she doesn’t move yet. “I’m not speaking to you as a PPDC representative anymore, Raleigh. I’ve lost family too.”

He tries to think clearly. It’s hard. He’s been overloaded. But he’s still himself, on some level, even with this weird gaping wound in his mind. He has to believe that. “Trespasser?”

“Yes. I’m not going to stand in your way. But I owe you. We all owe you. I don’t want you to walk out of here just to put a gun to your head.”

He smiles, and tries not to make it too crooked. “I’ve got plenty of money from endorsements. The PPDC can keep my pension. I don’t need it.”

“You say that now, but there’s been a lot of market uncertainty.” She’s shuffling her feet. Shifting quietly away from the door. Her clothes are pre-Breach business casual, but her shoes are practical rubber-soled affairs. The days of good cheap heels from China are long gone.

Raleigh takes the opening she provides. He walks out into a dim, narrow corridor. He has no idea where he’s going, what he’s going to do, or how he’s going to forget.

“One more thing,” she calls out from behind. “There are a lot of people waiting in the exit lobby. They’ll want autographs, and pictures, and... well, the line-up.”

 _Jesus_.

Raleigh doesn’t call them Jaeger Flies or groupies anymore. He doesn’t call them anything at all, unless they ask him to. 

After every deployment, combat or patrol, there’s a certain routine: medical check-up, brain scan, initial debriefing session at LOCCENT, a shower, a fresh uniform. And on the way to leave, the line-up. Mostly women. All dressed in pre-Breach glam, made-up gorgeous and glittering. Sometimes Raleigh chose by lipstick color, a different shade every time. They were always experienced and enthusiastic. The line-up is a tacit agreement to allow them inside the civilian area of the Shatterdome as long as they don’t fight over Rangers, and as long as the Rangers don’t fight over _them_. 

“It feels kind of sleazy,” he’d told Yancy, the first time.

“Get over yourself. We’re rock stars, and that gets them off. They love it. You’re doing someone a favor. Just pick one—hell, pick two, that’s _my_ plan—let the rest down easy and go have a good time. See you tomorrow, kid.” Yancy had punched him on the shoulder (which ached a little from the strain of the Conn-Pod) and made a beeline for the flashing cameras.

After a few minutes, Raleigh had done the same.

Yancy wasn’t always right, but he’d been right about this. Hot, sticky, adrenaline-fueled sex was one of the best coping strategies for the apocalypse. 

Better than putting a gun to your head.

But he can’t walk out there alone. And the thought of losing himself in someone else’s body is terrifying when he can’t even find _himself_ any more. 

He’s left so much behind in the Drift. 

“Is there another way out?” he asks.

“There’s a loading area. I’ll show you.”

He lets her take the lead, and follows her quiet footsteps. 

He still doesn’t know where he’s going.

 

 

_July 2020, Vladivostok_

 

Mako’s dizzy from jet lag. She takes a deep breath, walks to the edge of the pier and scans in all directions. She finds the sharp spires of the Zolotoy Rog Bridge, the blunt plateau of the shipyard Shatterdome. She knows where she is now: about a thousand kilometers due west of Sapporo. Northwest of Tokyo. Even farther north of warm, subtropical Tanegashima, her old home.

Vladivostok is warm too, and wet. She’s surprised how warm. When she touches the sheen of rainwater on the concrete railing, it’s the temperature of blood. She reads the latest scientific reports in English: anti-kaiju nuclear strikes are contributing to global warming. Radioactive dust particles could be entering her lungs with every breath, but that’s just a background detail. She’s got more pressing concerns.  

Sasha isn’t hard to spot. Like the other landmarks, she towers above her bridesmaids. There’s a crown of platinum braids on her head topped with a wedding veil that flutters with every snap of the sea breeze.

Mako feels very small and young in comparison. 

She makes her way into the knot of Russians.

Sasha spots her and smiles broadly. There’s a smear of crimson lipstick on her white, white teeth. “ _Ohayou gozaimasu_ ,” she says.

It’s really not accurate for the time of day, but Mako appreciates the effort. “ _Pozdravlyayu_ ,” she replies. _Congratulations_ , in Russian, if she hasn’t mangled it too badly.

“I’m very happy today,” Sasha says, in the only language they both really share. 

“I’m happy for you.” Mako taps a front tooth discreetly. Sasha gets the message and licks her teeth, swirling away the crimson mark, then smiles again. “Will there be a honeymoon?”

“We must stay close to Cherno Alpha. So, no.” Sasha shrugs. “But we will have party tonight, and dancing. You come?”

Mako apologizes. Her schedule is too demanding. Her weaponry report needs data from the Vladivostok Shatterdome, and she’s booked for technical meetings late into the evening. “Marshall Pentecost says he will attend for an hour,” she adds. “We leave for Anchorage tomorrow. But maybe he will dance.”

“I will _make_ him.” Sasha flashes a fierce grin. 

Stacker Pentecost, bending and swaying—Mako covers her mouth to hide her laughter at the image. She forces her hand down again quickly, though, aware that the gesture reads as somewhat juvenile. Over the last years of her nomadic life, she’s gotten used to the polyglot body language of the PPDC: pushy Chinese and back-slapping Australians, civilian mixed with military, formal with informal. She adjusts.

“How are you doing... medically?” Mako asks, determined to be blunt. She doesn’t often get a chance to talk with Sasha, and this is important. 

“Radiation shielding is good. Metharocin is working.” Sasha’s smile slips a little. “Outlook for fertility is not so good.” She thumps a fist against her wedding dress, over her uterus, and makes a hissing sound. “But we will probably die in Cherno Alpha, so is not big thing.”

Mako wishes she could reassure Sasha, maybe paint a picture of growing old with Aleksis, but neither her English nor her imagination is up to the challenge. Instead, she nods and says only, “You have each other.”

“Yes. But you are very young. I tell you, go to clinic and ask doctors to freeze some eggs. You work too close to Jaegers. Go to clinic and do that. Because maybe we all... will continue. Who knows?”

“I will consider it,” Mako answers respectfully. But she’s lying. She can’t _consider_ phantom future children. Her mind is too full of weapon plans and Drift technology and kaiju reverse-bioengineering theories and constantly convincing herself that yes, she can do this—she can become a woman the world desperately needs. “Thank you very much for the advice, Mrs. Kaidanovsky.”

“Come, have cake.”

The entrance to the banquet hall is flanked by towering ice sculptures of Russian kills. The kaiju have melted enough that their features are obscured. Mako can’t tell which ones are Cherno Alpha’s anymore.

Once inside, Sasha’s relatives and crew members encircle her. Mako watches Sasha’s golden crown of braids bobbing farther and farther away.

_One day, I’ll be like her. Like Sensei._

_I’ll be a Ranger._

 


	2. 2021

_March 2021, Los Angeles_

 

“Listen to me!” Yancy shouts. “You need to—“

Raleigh listens, frozen.

“You need to understand that we’re _all_ dead. And it’s gonna be quick for me, but you? You’re gonna die slow.” 

There’s a rip in the world. 

_Slooooow_.

Raleigh fights his way out of the nightmare. He jolts awake, gasping and coughing. His scars burn, his head throbs, his gut feels and sounds like a washing machine full of tennis shoes. As miserable as he is right now, covered in cold sweat and close to puking, at least he’s not in the nightmare anymore, and that’s… well, it’s something.

“You’re up,” says the woman. She’s unwinding a towel from her wet hair. It swings down black and gleaming and smelling like flowers washed in rainwater. She folds the towel, hands it to Raleigh, and knots her hair into a loose bun. Other, less pleasant smells start to filter in: smoke and cat piss. They’re in an SRO, he remembers. They all smell like this. “The bathroom’s down the hall, Ranger.” Her smile is friendly but her eyes wander, like she’s not sure where she is, either. 

“Yeah, right. Sure. Thanks.” 

There’s no hot water in the shower, but he doesn’t mind. The cold shock settles his crawling skin. He gulps down clean handfuls of water, stops when he remembers there’s a water advisory in effect and the water probably isn’t clean, then drinks a few more handfuls because what the hell, it’s not going to kill him. 

By the time he makes his way back to the room, he’s remembered her name. _Leilah_. But not much else.

He knocks. She lets him in. 

“Hey, Leilah, I was kind of wasted last night,” he says. “Did I do anything embarrassing?”

“Other than be a lightweight? No, not really. You go down quick, though.” He likes the way she smiles and teases. The situation should be awkward, but somehow it’s not. 

“Yeah, I don’t drink a lot. Definitely a lightweight. Thanks for, um, putting me up.”

“You don’t remember me, do you? From after Yamarashi?”

He shakes his head, grimaces apologetically. She must have been in the lineup. Now that he looks at her more closely, there’s a Brawler Yukon tattoo on her shoulder.

“It’s alright. I didn’t expect you to. It’s not like you owe me anything.” She’s getting defensive. Won’t meet his eyes anymore, jerks her chin away.

“I owe you breakfast, at least. A good breakfast.” He’s still got plenty of money. “Don’t know how much I can eat, myself. My stomach—“ he winces, sucks in a breath of air through clenched teeth. “Don’t worry, it’s all from tequila, not trauma.”

“I know a decent restaurant.”

“Fuck decent,” he says. “Let’s go to Melrose Avenue.” 

He’s feeling really good, all of a sudden. Maybe it’s being around Leilah. He doesn’t like being alone. Never has. Since he staggered out of the Shatterdome, he’s always had company. 

Leilah throws a scarf around her neck and puts on a shimmery bronze lipstick. Turns out it’s going to take half an hour for the car service to pick them up, and they talk easily in the meantime. Heavy metal and weed smoke drift into the room from Leilah’s next-door neighbor, so they take the conversation outside, into the street. He can see the spire of the Shatterdome to the west, reaching up through the vivid layers of fallout-tainted sunlight.

“I used to be a systems analyst,” she tells him. “I didn’t think K-Day hit me hard until a year later, and I—I had a lot of problems. My family’s alive, but I don’t get along with them. I don’t do the groupie thing anymore, but it was fun while it lasted. I’m on furlough from the job corps right now. I hate this place. The worst part isn’t the smell, you know? It’s that there’s a Church of the Breach down the street and they’re always coming by and sliding those sick fucking pamphlets under the doors.”

He can’t even begin to wrap his mind around that worldview, so he doesn’t try. Instead, he’s already spinning ideas of how to help Leilah out. Part of it’s selfish, sure. She’s new yet at the same time, familiar, a comforting symbol of his past life. 

And she’s beautiful, and smells like clean rain.

The restaurant on Melrose won’t take Raleigh’s money. “If it wasn’t for you and your brother, we’d all be dead,” the manager tells him. “Come back any time. We won’t forget.”

_That’s kind of the problem_ , he thinks.

Raleigh argues for a minute longer, until Leilah sighs impatiently. 

“Let’s go back to my place,” he says.

“Okay, Ranger.” She rests a hand on his forearm, and it feels so good to carry a weight again, however light.

 

_July 1922, Hong Kong Shatterdome_

 

The head of Salvage raises the loudspeaker and blares a series of orders in Cantonese. Mako follows orders, steps into her radiation shielding suit and instantly breaks out in a prickly sweat. The heat is near lethal.  

The cooling packs embedded in the joints soon kick in, and it’s just enough to save the salvage crew from heat prostration. She furiously blinks away sweat drops and stares out through the face plate, out towards the murky waters of Victoria Harbor. Small boats are returning now that the kaiju alarms have stopped sounding.

Crimson Typhoon breaches to the south. The sight lifts her heart. She’s always lived close to the sea, knowing that it’s her birthright. _They won’t take our sea. We have heroes. We’ll keep fighting._  

The live footage of the battle had streamed across one vast wall of the Shatterdome. Once the Wei triplets had engaged Thundercloud Formation, the kaiju was finished. Decapitated, then sliced down into component pieces with all the grace and merciless efficiency of  a Chun Yeung Street butcher.

Shaolin Rogue, older and slower, hadn’t fared so well.

She knows the pilots. _Knew_ them. They were at the bottom of the ocean, or dissolved in an alien maw, or… better not to think about it. She swallows thickly, reminding herself to mourn the dead but celebrate the living.  

Crimson Typhoon looms higher as it drags the remains of Shaolin Rogue toward the Shatterdome. Perhaps the rest of the salvage crew are cheering, or crying, sounds muffled in the privacy of their suits.

The broken, nearly bisected body of Shaolin Rogue is soon laid out on the deck. Crimson Typhoon’s motions are slow and delicate, wary of the soft small humans it looms over. Shaolin Rogue’s nuclear furnace is dead, but they all know it’s still leaking. Mako’s suit comm comes alive, giving readings and technical messages in Cantonese and Putonghua and English. 

She joins the crew as they swarm over the body.

_The Mark III models could be improved_ , she thinks to herself, as she throws a grappling hook onto a projection of thigh armor. _Made faster. Better armored. The furnace design isn’t the weak point, in and of itself, it’s the transmission of power at the articulation points…_

Shaolin Rogue will never rise again. But perhaps her theory could be tested on another, less damaged Mark III.

An hour is all anyone can handle, in these suits and the sweltering heat. After the first round of measurement, they all stagger back into the Shatterdome. A relief crew is ready with hot tea and cold water and Metharocin supplements. 

Before she hits the showers, Mako calls Stacker Pentecost.

“I think Mark III reclamation is viable,” she says, exhausted but still hyped up, weirdly happy. “I’ll have numbers tonight.”

“Good,” Stacker replies. His voice is calm and reassuring. “I’m on my way to speak to the families of the Rangers. Then a press conference.” Their lives are planned down to the last minute, no margin for error. She’s used to it. 

“I’ll see you after the conference.” She’s grateful that he hasn’t immediately asked about radiation levels. It’s often a sore point between them. And since she’s grateful, she offers the information of her own accord. “Radiation leakage was less than expected. But I’ll check in at the clinic soon.”

“Good,” Stacker says again. She can almost hear him smiling.

She runs into a Wei triplet on the way out of the shower. Since he talks to her in English, she’s pretty sure it’s Cheung—the others stick to Putonghua more. 

“Restoration?” he asks, clipped and curt. A few droplets of water still cling to his short, bristly hair. She has the urge to reach up and sweep them away with her palm. 

“Full restoration is... not possible,” she says, and shakes her head. She wants to say something to commemorate Shaolin Rogue, but somewhere in the swirl of languages, the words wash away. She tightens her lips and tries to make her eyes speak, instead.

Probably-Cheung nods and turns away.

The press conference is almost postponed when Church of the Breach protesters show up. They’re quickly overwhelmed by the pro-PPDC crowd, who rip their robes off and beat them bloody. Mako watches from behind the barricades as the civil police wade in with riot shields. The uncharitable part of her wishes for a return to a more brutal regime in this country, in which the protesters would simply have been shot, the Temple of Reckoner razed to the ground. 

But she knows they’re not the real enemy.  She tells herself that the world will come out of this better. Battered, poisoned… but still, somehow, better. 

And when Stacker Pentecost steps in front of the cameras and begins _exactly_ on time, she believes it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of a planned five-part fic covering the five years between the Knifehead battle and the conclusion of the Kaiju War. Unbeta'ed.


End file.
